Strengthening Your Team for 2026

Welcome😊🖍️

You’ve been doing the real work of a leader these past two weeks, reflecting honestly on 2025 and shaping a bold, clear vision for 2026. That takes courage, intention, and commitment. By pushing through this process, you’re positioning yourself, your teachers, and your Early childhood program to enter 2026 with clarity and confidence instead of stress and guesswork.

This week, we shift into one of your biggest leadership priorities for 2026: building a strong, stable, motivated team.

Together, we’ll look closely at some common staffing challenges of 2025 and identify what needs to change. We’ll explore how to set intentional goals to recruit the right people, retain the great teachers you already have, and inspire your entire team to grow. We’ll also talk about strengthening morale, creating a culture where teachers feel valued, and building leadership capacity within your staff so you’re not carrying everything alone.

This is your opportunity to turn staffing from your biggest stressor into one of your biggest strengths.

Why Strengthening Your Team Matters in 2026

Your team is the heartbeat of your early childhood program. No matter how strong your curriculum, how beautiful your classrooms are, or how clear your vision, your teachers bring everything to life.

When your team is stable, supported, and motivated, everything improves:

• Classroom quality

• Family satisfaction

• Enrollment stability

• Operational consistency

• Licensing compliance

• Staff communication

• And most importantly, child outcomes

But when your team is unstable or stretched thin? Everything else feels harder. Systems strain. Morale dips. Miscommunication increases. Turnover becomes a cycle that drains your time, energy, and budget.

This week is about interrupting that cycle and building something stronger, more sustainable, and more supportive for 2026.

What 2025 Revealed About Your Staffing Reality

Before you set your goals, it's essential to honestly and clearly assess the staffing patterns expected in 2025. You've already begun reflecting on this, but here are a few more questions for you to consider. Being truthful with yourself is crucial for your growth as a leader.

• Where did turnover show up and why?

• Did new hires stay beyond 90 days?

• What exit themes kept repeating?

• When did morale dip, and what triggered it?

• Which roles felt the hardest to keep staffed?

• What feedback did teachers give directly or indirectly?

• Did onboarding or communication systems support success or create frustration?

💡Leadership takeaway: Patterns tell the truth.
What happened repeatedly in 2025 is not random; it’s a system issue waiting to be fixed. This knowledge has become your roadmap for 2026.

Top 3 Staffing Priorities for 2026:

1️⃣Recruit the Right People (Not Just the Available Ones)

🤔Why This Matters: Hiring the “available” person leads to turnover, burnout, and inconsistent classroom quality. Hiring the right person creates stability, improves culture, and strengthens child outcomes. A single strong hire can shift the energy of an entire building.

✍🏼How to Strengthen your hiring:

• Rewrite job postings to emphasize mission, culture, and values (Click here for my guide)

• Recruit where passionate people already are (colleges, community centers, job fairs, parent networks)

• Ask interview questions that reveal mindset, problem-solving skills, and emotional intelligence

• Create an onboarding process (sample here) that builds confidence, connection, and clarity in the first 30 days

💡Leadership Takeaway: Strong recruitment isn’t luck, it’s leadership strategy. Every intentional decision you make shapes the level of talent you attract into your program.

2️⃣Retain & Grow the Team You Already Have

🤔Why This Matters: Finding new teachers is hard. Keeping great teachers is easier and more effective. Retention preserves culture, protects relationships with families, stabilizes classrooms, and saves your program thousands in hiring and retraining costs.

✍🏼How to Strengthen Retention:

• Identify the reasons teachers stay in your program (connection, support, recognition, growth)

• Strengthen morale with consistent appreciation and predictable communication

• Providing coaching that helps teachers feel successful and supported

• Use “stay interviews” to understand their needs before it’s too late

• Build routines that reduce stress: clear expectations, weekly check-ins, predictable schedules

💡Leadership takeaway: Retention is built in everyday moments, not big events. Your presence, consistency, and communication matter more than you think.

3️⃣Build Leadership Capacity Across Your Team

🤔Why This Matters: No program thrives when only one person is in charge. Sharing leadership creates stability, strengthens decision-making, and ensures your program runs smoothly even when you’re not in the building.

✍🏼How to Strengthen Skills:

• Give your assistant director clear areas of ownership

• Identify high-potential lead teachers and develop them as mentors or team leaders

• Teach staff how to solve problems instead of waiting for your direction

• Create leadership routines: weekly leadership meetings, peer mentoring, model classrooms

• Build trust by involving teachers in planning, decisions, and solutions

💡Leadership Takeaway: The strongest leaders don’t carry everything; they build leaders around them. Shared leadership reduces burnout and increases consistency across your program.

Strengthening your team is not a one-time task; it’s an ongoing leadership practice that sets the tone for every classroom, every family interaction, and every outcome in your program. By focusing intentionally on recruiting the right people, retaining and growing your current staff, and building leadership capacity across your team, you’re transforming staffing from a stressor into a strength.

Next week, we’ll shift our focus to one of the most visible measures of your program’s success: enrollment, family engagement, and community trust. You’ll learn how to attract and retain families, deepen meaningful connections, and strengthen your program’s reputation in the community, so that 2026 begins with a strong, connected, and thriving classroom and program culture.

Till Next time,

Jen Sprafka📋

P.S. Interested in learning more about stay interviews, click here⬅️

P.P.S. Remember, strong leadership isn’t about doing it all yourself, it’s about building others up. Take a moment this week to acknowledge one teacher who’s made a difference this year.